The Birdcage (17 page)

A black patch. A dark, an animal way of standing there beneath the street-lamp. Her protector? But why in Berwick Street?

Peter Ash has moved on into fog again. In Brewer Street, a sudden smell of fish. A woman in dark clothes stands in the doorway of a delicatessen. “People! Listen!” she mutters, “People! Listen to me!” in an Italian accent. Peter Ash hurries on and does not listen. In Old Compton
Street a man stands, examining the stills of
Town of Lust
outside a Members-Only cinema; he has to look very close because of the fog; his nose is against one of the stills, and his behind protrudes into the pavement. The coffee-bars in Old Compton Street are closed, and the shutters have come down over wine and cheeses and
charcuterie
. In Lisle Street again a man rapt before a window—so rapt they are, the Night People, at what they see in the windows of shops. He is chewing his finger-nails, and staring at a bank of radio components, his gaze caught and held (as it seems for ever, unless the Prince should come through thorns to his rescue) by a sign that reads, “Full Bridge Metal Rectifier. 24 volt. 6 amp. 22/6.”

Time passing. A tiredness at the back of the legs. An unwillingness in Peter Ash to enter any of the coffee-bars still open, and rest. Two fifteen. He has been swimming through fog towards a light, and suddenly it disappears. Are the lamps going out all over Soho? But it was only a chemist’s sign, which some automatic doohickey has turned off, and there is the luminous envelope of the street-lamp still ahead. Berwick Street again. The old man nods. This is where the fog lifted, but there is no lifting now, and suddenly, without his realizing that anybody is there, he has come again upon the man with the black eye-patch. The man does not speak. He has not changed his stance, still relaxed and watchful, the pelvis a little forward, the weight evenly distributed. But now the man is alone. He still carries the white leather handbag, but the girl has gone. Peter Ash has stopped at the sight of the man with the
eye-patch
, but now walks on slowly. He draws level. It becomes difficult to move his feet forwards, but very slowly he does so; it is as if the fog around the man with the black
eye-patch
has become viscous, and holds Peter Ash to a pace that can hardly be said to be movement at all. The man looks
at Peter Ash. He does not speak. He does not smile. His expression does not change. Simply, it
includes
Peter Ash.

Peter Ash forces himself forwards, and, once he has passed the man, finds that he can move more quickly. He hurries on down Berwick Street. He is trembling, feels weak, and stops at the bottom of Berwick Street to recover. Nobody is by. The fog is silent. But out of the silence he hears a sound, and it is the sound of feet approaching, one after the other, relaxed and easy and unhurried.

Imagination!—people of that sort wear crêpe-soled shoes, so that even if the man were following him, Peter Ash would not hear him. But that thought brings no reassurance. He goes quickly back towards Piccadilly Circus, where the lights will make the fog luminous, and there will be people, and taxis in case he should wish to go home. He reaches Great Windmill Street, where the boys for sale crowd a Snack Bar, spinning out cups of tea before returning to the street. A hesitation. Should he go in for the warmth and company? But he is embarrassed. He has no place in that freemasonry. He goes on to Trafalgar Square. All along the parapet at the north end of the Square are figures in ones and twos, gazing at the empty benches below, and out towards the fountains which they cannot see. These figures, as one walks along behind them, appear out of the fog like statues in a row. Peter Ash stops for a while, and becomes a statue in his turn, arms resting on the parapet, body leaning forward, staring out into the fog towards Nelson and the fountains. A sound beside him. A match strikes. He thinks his heart will stop. But it is only one of the other statues which has moved up a step or two to stand beside him. Peter Ash moves a little away, and hears footsteps approaching from the right.

North again. A policeman with an Alsatian dog comes out of William the Fourth Street and turns up St. Martin’s
Lane. Peter Ash follows; policemen are protection, and defy footfalls. But the policeman hears Peter Ash, checks, stops, and allows Peter Ash to draw level and pass him. Perhaps the policeman, also, does not care to be followed in the fog? Peter Ash turns back again to Leicester Square, to the Open-All-Night Barbecue, and stands in line for soup. The time is three in the morning, and the Open-All-Night Barbecue is by no means crowded. There are empty tables all around; Peter Ash may sit where he will. The man with the black eye-patch is sitting at a table in the corner, the white leather handbag on the seat beside him. He takes it from the seat, and places it on the table, leaving the seat for Peter Ash.

They sit side by side in silence. Peter Ash finishes his soup. The man with the black eye-patch takes a packet of Woodbines from the pocket of his leather jacket, takes a cigarette himself, and offers one to Peter Ash. Peter Ash, who usually smokes Gauloises filter-tips, takes a cigarette from the packet of Woodbines, and the man strikes a match on the table, and lights it. Nothing is said. The cigarettes are smoked, and the man stands. Peter Ash follows him from the Open-All-Night Barbecue. The man with the black eye-patch goes north up Wardour Street. Peter Ash says, “Where are we going? We can take a taxi,” but the man does not reply. They turn left, then right, and are in Berwick Street. They turn left again, then right, and seem to be in some kind of yard behind an office-block, too far from the street-lamps for light to penetrate the fog. “This’ll do,” says the man with the black eye-patch.

Peter Ash cannot any longer see the man except as a shape in the fog. The man puts out his left hand to Peter Ash, and draws it caressingly over the back of Peter Ash’s head and neck, as if he were exploring the geography of it.
By that action, Peter Ash is brought close to the man, pressed against the coarse denim of his jeans and the leather of his jacket. Peter Ash is quiet under the man’s hand, like an animal which is stroked and gentled into obedience. The man’s left hand softly searches and finds a place at the back of Peter Ash’s head, and the man’s right hand is brought swiftly from behind his back to strike that place with the white leather handbag, which is filled with such iron weights as you may find any day on a greengrocer’s barrow in Berwick Street Market. Peter Ash falls forward like a calf poleaxed by a butcher, and the man holds him by the collar of his raincoat.

No trouble from Peter Ash. The man with the black eye-patch lowers him against a wall, opens Peter Ash’s raincoat and jacket, and takes a wallet from an inside pocket of the jacket. He takes a wallet, and the ring from Peter Ash’s finger, and the watch from Peter Ash’s wrist. He feels the cloth of Peter Ash’s jacket between finger and thumb, hesitates for a moment, and then decides. He strips Peter Ash of his raincoat, his suit and his shoes, and leaves him there, unconscious and ludicrous in shirt and underwear, propped against a wall in the cold and fog of a November night, while nearby at the junction of Berwick and Broadwick Streets, the old man with the muffler nods and nods his head at the Night People who pass, nodding the night away until the dawn.

O
n the day Lucy died, Mrs. Halliday decided that action could not be put off any longer. It would have been better, as she now clearly saw, to have used Lucy while Lucy lived. As soon as it had become obvious that Lucy was pining, Mrs. Halliday should have put on her coat, and carried Lucy round to Ovington Square for a reunion with Fred. One reunion might happily have put Norah Palmer in mind for another; at the least, Mrs. Halliday would have reopened a kind of communication, and made, perhaps, a weekly visit with the cage. Now Lucy’s death furnished a less happy occasion, nor could it be repeated. All must be told in the one interview.

She chose Saturday morning, when Norah Palmer would probably be in, and arrived to find Norah Palmer in the kitchen, wearing a housecoat over pyjamas, drinking coffee and reading her way through the Fridays before tackling the week-end shopping. “I came to see you; I hope you’ll excuse it,” Mrs. Halliday said, looking around for Fred. “It’s Lucy, miss. She’s pined away entirely.”

“Lucy? … Oh—Lucy.” But Fred had been dead a long time. “I’m so sorry, Mrs. Halliday,” said Norah Palmer. “Fred was eaten by a hawk on the roof. Would you like some coffee? It’s still hot.”

“No, I won’t stay.” But this was formula. Norah Palmer had already poured the coffee. “If you’ve poured it, then,”
Mrs. Halliday said. “I suppose we don’t want to waste it, do we? But I won’t take my coat off. I just came over to tell you.” She sat on a hard chair, and sipped coffee which Norah Palmer had forgotten to sugar. Perhaps she should have prepared her part in this conversation instead of leaving it to chance and the occasion. “We should never have separated them birds, miss,” she said. “It’s been nothing but pine, pine, pine since you left the flat.”

“Since Fred left, surely?” Lucy had never shown affection for Norah Palmer, and Mrs. Halliday could not be suggesting that Peter Ash himself was pining.

Mrs. Halliday said, “I don’t like change. I never have. That’s my nature.” They sat in silence for a while. Mrs. Halliday said, “You begin with the changes, and you can’t tell where it will stop. You don’t know what you’re going to get, do you? Like my married sister went to one of those council flats in Lisson Grove, not thinking. But she had to give it up. It was her feet, you see. The doctor says they’ll never be any good. Not as feet.” The kitchen at Ovington Square was considerably smaller than the kitchen at Beaufort Street, and Squad had skimped on the fittings. Mrs. Halliday said, “Of course you’ve got a nice place here. I can see that.”

“It’s not really mine, I’m afraid, or I’d do something with it. It belongs to somebody I know at work.”

“Oh yes?” Mrs. Halliday said. “I had to wrap her in newspaper, and put her in the dustbin. You can’t cremate them, you see; it’s not like dogs. Mr. Ash, he never took any notice of that bird, not after….”

Norah Palmer said, “How
is
Mr. Ash? Keeping well, I hope?”

This was Mrs. Halliday’s opportunity, but she found she could not take it. She sat there, letting her coffee cool in the cup, and her face took on a sullen expression, and
words, which were not for her a commodity usually in short supply, had gone right out of stock, she found. “My Chucky loved that bird.” She said.

“Shall I warm your coffee up?”

“No, I can’t stay.” This, if repeated, as it had been, was no longer a social counter, but a statement of intention. “I only came to tell you about that bird. I didn’t know if you mightn’t be wanting the cage for Fred. You haven’t got the space for it here, though, have you, really? I’m surprised you can find room for your own things.” She finished her coffee, and stood up. “I keep things as nice as I can,” she said. “Mr. Ash, he’s not home as much as he used to be. He goes out more in the evenings.” She stepped from the kitchen into the hall of Squad’s top floor. “You’ve just got the two rooms, then?” she said.

“And kitchen and bathroom. It’s all I need. I really hardly use the living-room.”

“Yes…. Well,” said Mrs. Halliday, finally, sadly, with a consciousness of failure that was strange to her, “I can’t stay.” She took a step towards the door, while what was to be told fought its way up through layers of reluctance. At the door, she turned and faced Norah Palmer. “You come back, miss, before he gets into trouble,” she said, and went quickly down the stairs.

*

The waste! The waste!
She had given Peter Ash nine years of her life, and now all was worse than before. She should never have begun it, never have interfered.
You come back, miss, before he gets into trouble
. She knew well enough what sort of trouble. The waste! Their home in Beaufort Street, all that good taste, all that comfort without self-indulgence, all the things they had chosen together, with the notion sometimes explicitly stated that by the accumulation and arrangement of
things
is personality shown, all the books,
the Swedish glass, the curtaining and cushion covers, the lamps, the carpets—all that she had left behind (she had brought so little with her, rather than destroy what had been built), now reduced to the level of an anonymous hotel room—“It’s nice here. You’ve got a nice place here.” “Yes, it is quite nice.” The waste!

Peter Ash—what did she care for Peter Ash in himself? But she had acquired him (to avoid avoidable waste) and made him. She had taught him so much. She had watched him grow, and watered him, and added a little Plant-Aid in the summer months, and he had put out leaves and begun to be a sort of public person, and all that was now liable to be pulled up and swept away; it would need no more than some trivial, squalid paragraph in the
News of the World
, because Peter Ash was not big enough, would never be big enough in himself to ride that kind of thing. He would have to resign from
The Living Arts
, and outside
The Living Arts
he was nothing. The waste! She didn’t care what he did and with whom. It wasn’t worth caring about, that sort of thing; it wasn’t important or serious. She cared only that so much of her own work would end in nothing.

You come back, miss
…. How could she? She had not wanted to go. Peter Ash had pushed her out, and by that selfish act had not only undone nine years of work, but had left
her
, Norah Palmer, defenceless. A defenceless woman. Oh, she had a job, and could deal well enough with any of the perils of Pauline, but in every important way she was defenceless, wide open to love and pity and to the old. There was now no possible reason why Norah Palmer’s mother should not move from Chard to London, and take a little flat somewhere, which they would share. The arrangement with Squad was temporary; that was obvious. Norah Palmer might jog along in Ovington Square comfortably enough for one year or two, but in time she would
want a place of her own—and she did; she ached for it. Well then, Norah Palmer’s mother could sell her equities easily enough to buy a long lease or the freehold of some tiny Georgian house, and she would make this over to Norah Palmer by deed of gift so as to avoid death duties, and just keep one room for herself in it. They would be company for each other, Norah Palmer and her mother; they would have great old chats together when they felt like it, and would share the housework. If later on, Norah Palmer were to marry, which wasn’t—they might just as well face it like sensible women—
likely
except in the way of a marriage by agreement in middle age, though Norah Palmer’s mother, she was bound to say, had heard that these often turned out surprisingly well, and after all, on the Continent of Europe … and indeed India, with all that child-bride nonsense…. but anyway if Norah were to marry, her mother would move out of the tiny Georgian house at once, and make no bones about it. Norah Palmer’s mother had never approved, and never would approve of in-laws living together in one house; it was a certain way to quarrel. Being near was another matter; in-laws within reach could be helpful to a married couple. So if Norah Palmer were later on to marry, Norah Palmer’s mother would move out jolly pronto to some little flat nearby.

Norah Palmer’s mother, after four weeks in a cheap hotel, had bustled back to Chard, leaving Norah Palmer to think matters over, and perhaps begin to look about her for the tiny Georgian house. Impossible to say flatly, “No.” Norah Palmer was alone now—a woman defenceless against family affection and family convenience and family duty. She had not been a person subject to headaches and lassitudes; in all these years, even her periods had been placid. But by the end of the second week of her mother’s visit, Norah Palmer had begun to expect a headache at
about five o’clock of every working afternoon, half an hour before she left the office, an hour before meeting her mother.

Somehow, if she could, she would find a way of refusing the arrangement. Then she would live alone, she supposed. But if one lived alone, one was likely to fall into habits of eccentricity. She went to the self-service delicatessen to buy cheese and brown sugar, and found Monica Badgebury there. “Good gracious, Monica!” she said. “It must be years.”

“Norah Palmer! I didn’t know you lived near here.”

“Well, now you know I do.”

Monica Badgebury had been the one certain First of Norah Palmer’s year at Newnham. Time which erodes the neck and thickens the hips, Time which sharpens the nose and dulls the sight and sags the breasts, Time which enlarges the pores and steals away the teeth, Time which deadens hair and reddens hands, Time, the bachelor uncle who makes free with us all, personally and persistently and in intimate ways, had been at work on Monica Badgebury. She was no older, could not be more than a year older than Norah Palmer. Now biscuit had turned to brown; black hair worn longer than was fashionable had coarsened and streaked and been crammed into a chignon; the mouth had taken a discontented turn downwards. Determination in Monica Badgebury had become doggedness; intelligence, erudition. She wore a two-piece from the Home-Weare Shop in Rathbone Place with a scarf of cerise chiffon, and her lips were magenta. “How pleasant to meet you again!” she said. “Now let me see, what was your field, my dear? The Augustans?”

“Not for some time, I’m afraid. I work for a television company now.”

“Oh yes? People do go in for that sort of thing, I know. Do you appear? I must watch.”

“No, I don’t appear.”

“My dear, I’m sure you’re wise. It’s a great mistake for people like us to appear, I feel. An unfortunate mistake.” Monica Badgebury named
The Living Arts
philosopher and, with considerably more disapproval, a popularizing historian, who had found it easier to maintain a reputation for scholarship with the many people who did not know his subject than with the few who did. As she spoke, her hands went out to the shelves of the self-service delicatessen, picking as it seemed at random to fill a wire basket with Shredded Wheat. “I have wondered sometimes whether the roots of my disinclination towards television might not lie in emotional prejudice,” she said, and one thin hand fluttered like a brown bird over cans of tomato soup, indistinguishable in every way from each other except by their labels, “but I have decided that they do not. Of course I have never been asked. If I had been asked, I might feel differently, but I hope I should not. In speaking to unintelligent, or at least to
under
-intelligent people, or to people …” three tins of beans, the smallest size … “who quite simply lack the basic knowledge that would allow them to approach one’s subject, one might be driven first to simplify, then to distort, and finally perhaps to deliberate falsification for effect.” Tinned peaches. But something about the weight of the tin in her hand drew her attention to it. “No,” she said. “South African,” and put it back on the shelf. “Then of course, what one says is never printed, and cannot, therefore, be critically considered by one’s colleagues, and that, I think, may very easily lead one into an irresponsibility of judgment, would you agree?”

“Shall I get you another basket? That one seems to be full.”

“Oh no, my dear. I only came in for instant coffee.” She regarded the contents of her basket with an expression too
mild for surprise. “Things mount up,” she said. “I so seldom shop that, when I do, I take the opportunity to stock up. Usually, the woman who cleans the flat looks after this kind of thing, but she has been away for three weeks for some reason, so there may be deficiencies. Perhaps she may be ill or dead. In the United States, I gather from a colleague of mine, Frewin—You remember Frewin?”

Norah Palmer did not remember.

“Perhaps you don’t remember Frewin himself. He was before our day at Cambridge. But you will remember his little book on the Wool Trade in the Later Thirteenth Century. Now Frewin spent a year, you know, in … I think it was Idaho, and he tells me that in the United States nobody of intelligence either watches or takes any part in the
popular
television there, but that the universities have their own stations, quite like the Third Programme except that the daytime programmes, as it happens, are of an educational rather than an academic nature. But there
are
periods—usually very early in the morning—when scholars are given
carte blanche
, and Frewin himself delivered a very interesting series of lectures on the Medieval Staple in what was called the Dawn Seminar. Most of his students, he tells me, set their alarm clocks early so as to be able to watch, and he had a number of letters from quite ordinary people; he still corresponds, I believe, with the proprietor of an all-night snack-bar in Moscow, Idaho. I sometimes think it’s a pity that we don’t do more of that kind of thing in this country.”

“You’re teaching at London?”

It had not occurred to Monica Badgebury that anyone might not know this. She added a fourth can of beans to the three she had already. At some stage of the canning process, a little curry powder had been mixed with the
beans so as to justify the label, “Chili Con Carne”. Monica Badgebury said, “I lunch in hall on my teaching days, of course, but if I’m going to spend the day at the Museum, I like to get in a cooked breakfast. So often it has to last all day.”